เบื่อดราม่าอันหาสาระมิได้

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s mission to reassure Japanese investors rattled by last year’s supply chain-busting floods appears to be getting something of a mixed response.

Her government has promoted Ms. Yingluck’s visit to Japan this week as an opportunity to win back the confidence of Japanese businesses affected by the devastating floods. The inundation knocked out the distribution of crucial car and electronics components world wide. Japanese firms were particularly badly affected. Japan is the single largest foreign investor in the country, and a Japan External Trade Organization survey released earlier this month reported that 67% of firms exporting to or investing in Thailand were hit by the deluge, which also claimed several hundred lives and drenched large swathes of the capital, Bangkok.

Not surprisingly, many Japanese executives were keen to hear about Thailand’s $11 billion plan to shore up its flood defenses, which was drafted in part by Ms. Yingluck’s brother, former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, who now lives overseas after Thailand’s armed forces ousted him from power in 2006.

So, with a Japanese-language copy of her speech already handed out to an eager audience at the Japan Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, Ms. Yingluck arrived to make her big pitch – in Thai.

For seven minutes, Ms. Yingluck, 44 years old, spoke to the hundred-strong audience without any accompanying translation, leaving many of the attending business leaders wondering quite what she was talking about and awkwardly scanning their hand-outs for clues.

Ms. Yingluck then left the room in silence, smiling and bowing as she went.

A representative from a travel company remarked that attendees were appreciative of Ms. Yingluck’s attempts to boost their confidence and explain Thailand’s new flood-prevention measures. But he also said it was “a bit weird” that her team didn’t provide a simultaneous translation.

Perhaps stranger still, Ms. Yingluck, who has a master’s degree from Kentucky State University in the U.S., could have chosen to speak in English, a language which some people in the audience also speak. It could be, though, that Ms. Yingluck wasn’t entirely confident in English. A video of her greeting visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Thailand last year by saying “overcome” instead of “welcome” got heavy play on YouTube, while Ms. Yingluck’s political opponents sometimes unfavorably compare her prowess with the language with that of her predecessor, Eton-and-Oxford educated Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Thai government officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.